10 Facts About Ukraine, Its History, and Its People

1 Ukraine is home to the first constitution in the modern world.
In 1710, Ukrainian Cossack leader Pylyp Orlyk authored a constitution establishing three branches of government and legally underscored the importance of equality and human rights for citizens under Cossack rule, including a guarantee for free elections. Orlyk’s government predates the United States Constitution by 77 years.

2Ukraine is the largest country in Europe.
At 233,013 square miles, Ukraine is 2,000 square miles larger than mainland France, 50,000 square miles larger than Spain, and 200,000 square miles larger than Germany. Ukraine is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Texas, and the separatist-occupied territory is smaller than the state of New Jersey. To bring it a little closer to home, the entire state of Illinois can fit inside the territory of Ukraine more than four times.

3Ukraine’s ties to Western Europe span more than a 1,000 years.
The daughter of Grand Prince Yaroslav, Anna, became the Queen Consort of France in 1051. Anna was highly educated and introduced Eastern culture to the Franks, paving the way for relationships between medieval Ukraine and Western Europe for centuries.

4Ukrainian civilizations date back to 4800 B.C.
The Trypillian and Scythian civilizations thrived in the land where Ukraine is today. At their peak in the 7th century B.C., the Scythians actively traded with civilizations in lands as far away as China, Persia, Egypt, and Greece.

5Ukrainian leaders shielded thousands of Jews during WWII.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church for 45 years, was honored by the Anti-Defamation League in 2013 for saving thousands of Jews during WWII. He and other civic and Church leaders hid Jews in their homes and monasteries during the Nazi invasion. A common criticism of Ukrainians is anti-Semitism, but figures like Metropolitan Sheptytsky, dispel such accusations.

6Ukrainians were subject to one of the worst genocides in history.
As many as ten million Ukrainians were killed when they were denied food between 1932-1933. The act, which is widely considered to be genocide on the part of the Soviet Union, is known as the Holodomor. Entire villages where Ukrainians had died were repopulated by ethnic Russians in order to create ethnic homogeny in the Soviet Union.

7Most Ukrainians want to join the European Union.
According to the most recent public opinion poll by Deutsche Welle, 73% of Ukrainians want to join the European Union, and the Gorshenin Institute showed that 53% of Ukrainians want to join NATO.

8The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian.
In most countries, the official language is that of the predominant ethnicity – for which many countries are named. Although many ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian and do business in the Russian language, Article 10 of Ukraine’s constitution requires all official activity of the central government to be conducted in Ukrainian. However, the constitution guarantees protections for minority languages, including Russian. Some local governments have adopted Russian, Moldovan, Romanian, and Hungarian as secondary official languages, and are encouraged to use those languages to govern locally, though not nationally.

9Ukraine has paid off $14 billion USD of its debts in recent months.
As Ukraine teeters on the edge of a national default, recent months have proven that it can still live up to its word and pay its international debts. Since Chicagoan Natalie Jaresko took over as Finance Minister in December, Ukraine has paid international creditors $14 billion USD.

10Ukraine is home to 45.49 million people.
According to the World Bank, Ukraine was home to 45.49 million people in 2013 – that’s just short of the population of the entire American West Coast at the last federal census. Ukraine fell victim to massive population loss after independence in 1991, as more than 7 million Ukrainians left their homeland to find work in the United States, Western Europe, and the Middle East.

Awful? Do you have something better? Go on and list 10 facts about the US or another country which do not end up being “self explanatory.” I do not even care to know which facts mean nothing to you. YOU have presented yourself in an ‘awful’ manner. It’s not like article was titled “10 ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, BLOW YOUR MIND, YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING – Facts about Ukraine, etc…”

Facts are relevant in the light of aquisations from Russian news and questions from the people who knows nothing about Ukraine. However some of them should be presented in a different way to avoid misinterpretation.

For e.g. fact 10 is important to show where most of the money from the recent borrowing goes – on old debt restructuring to keep the economy alive, but definitely shouldn’t be treated as a sign of economical improvement.

Fact 7 also sounds doubtful. While most of Ukrainians welcome the adoption of european values and would like to travel without visa, the authority of EU, which concerns and talks significantly the number of outweigh well-timed actions, has significantly decreased among a lot of people in Ukraine. This make the statistics of willingness for full integration with EU rather questionable.

I agree….They have a right to be who they are in there own country…..every country should have there National assets…..whether it is there culture or language …..if they want change they …the people should change…..NOT political governments because there main goal is money and power……Because thats all they have….They fail to have the values of normal people….

A very doubtable statement. The western Ukraine which was a part of Poland for somewhat like 600 years occasionally drifting between Austro-Hungarian Empire (which is not even slavic), Luthania and Poland can not be called the home of Rus’. Moreover, if a lexicological similarity between the name of the country and the name of the language is considered to be a reasonable proof of national identity in Ukraine, then the lexicological similarity between Russia and Rus’ must be considered the same. There are multiple arguments to treat it in that way. For many American people our dispute may be quite complicated to understand since they did not study the history of that part of the globe. So, please, check it in books if you feel interested in that topic. What I wanted to say is that Kievan Rus’ went out of Novgorodian Rus’ with the capital in Novgorod – one of the oldest Russian cities. Kiev was considered to be more profitable place from economical point of view due to the trade routes, thus, the capital had been moved to Kiev and thus the Kievan Rus’ came up. History knows many examples when the capital was moved within one state. Many of them took place in Russia – St. Petersburg was called a capital in 1712 and lost this title in 1918 when Moscow became the capital of Russia again. Isn’t it stupid to call St. Petersburg Russia and Moscowian Russia to be different countries? Regardless the political organisation and the location of the capital a country keeps to be the same country as long as it keeps the language and the name unchanged or mostly unchanged (Russian Empire and Russian Federation does not make a significant difference. Even the USSR was called Russia by many people in the West). From that point of view neither the Western Ukraine nor the Eastern Ukraine can be called a home of Rus’ since this is a completely different country with a very short period of real sovereignity, when on the other hand Russia grew out of Novgorodian and later of Kievan Rus’ to become a Russian Empire just like many other countries evolving from the first settlement into the bigger country. As a remark I must say that relations between different cities in times of Rus’ both Kievan and Novgorodian can not be described in terms of modern countries relations like Russia and Ukraine. There was no division like that and city governors simply fought with each other for power and territories regardless the fact that many of them had family ties.

1. The oldest written document still governing a sovereign nation today is that of San Marino. The Leges Statutae Republicae Sancti Marini was written in Latin and consists of six books.
Orlyk’s project for an independent Ukrainian State never materialized, and his constitution, written in exile, never went into effect.
2. Russia 3,809,688 sq.km; 17,151,346 km² including Asian part (excluding Crimea). France 671308 sq km including all overseas department (551,695 metropolitan France) Ukraine 603628 sq km including Crimea!!!
3. In 1051 it was Kievan Rus’ meaning it was Russia with capitol in Kiev.
4. Hard to call them Ukrainians when there was no Ukraine.
5. Between 1941 and 1945, 850,000 – 900,000 Jews who lived in the territory of modern Ukraine were killed. The National Geographic reported: ” A number of Ukrainians had collaborated: According to German historian Dieter Pohl, around 100,000 joined police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis.
7. Probably true, but for what reason? To be able to live the country?
9. On 11 March the International Monetary Fund announced a $40bn assistance package to Kiev, consisting of $17.5bn in new loans and $15-20bn write-offs of previous ones.

The problem with people here on this website is simply one of ignorance and typical Mongol heritage defiance of the truth. There simply ISN’T any legitimate State which can be called “Rus-sia”…it is Muscovy, and only Muscovy as that is the legitimate heritage of those identifying themselves as “Rus-sians.” They are of the heritage of the Khans, and before that the northeastern tribes of Muscovy, not Kyivan Rus. Indeed, the village of Moscow was founded, not by a Kyivan Rus Prince..that is a lie and a huge myth created by Rus-ians to try to connect Rus-sia to Ukraine and steal it’s history…however, truth is quite different…
Here are the facts:
1. At the time of the Kyivan Empire there was no mention of a Moscow nation. It is well known that Moscow was created in 1277 as a subservient vassal region or ‘ulus’ to the Golden Horde, established by the Khan Mengu-Timur. By that time, Kyivan Rus had existed for more than 300 years.
2) There are no indications of any connection of Kyivan Rus with the Finnish ethnic groups in the land of ‘Moksel’ or later of the Moscow principality with the Principality of Kyivan Rus up until the XVI century. At the time when Kyivan Rus had officially accepted Christianity, the Finn tribes in ‘Moksel’ lived in a semi-primitive state.
3)How can anyone speak of ‘an older brother’ when that ‘older brother’ did not first appear until centuries after Rus-Ukrainians? He has no moral right to call himself an ‘older brother’, nor to dictate how people are to live, nor to force his culture, language, and world views. It is clear that until the end of the XV century, there was no Russian nation, there was no older brother ‘Great Russian’, nor were there any Russian people. Instead, there was the land of Suzdal: the land of Moksel, later the Moscow princedom, which entered into the role of the Golden Horde, the nation of Genghis Khan. From the end of the XIII to the beginning of the XVIII century, the people in this land were called Moskovites. And Moscow historians are silent about this question of their national origins.
4) Moskovites, ‘Great Russians’ – who are they?
During the IX to the XII cent. the large area of Tula, Riazan, and today’s Moscow region, including the tribes of Mer, Ves, Moksha, Chud, Mari and others – all this was inhabited by the people called ‘Moksel’. These tribes eventually became the foundation of the nation who now call themselves ‘Great Russians’.
5) Key Point:
In 1137, the younger son of the Kyivan prince Monomakh, Yuri Dolgoruky (who had been left without a princedom in the Kyivan empire) arrived in this land.
Yuri Dolgoruky began the rule of the ‘Riurykovyches’ in ‘Moksel’, becoming prince of Suzdal. To him and a local Finnish woman was born a son Andrey, called ‘Bogoliubsky’. Born and raised in the forest wilderness among the half savage Finnish tribes, prince Andrey cut all ties with his father’s entourage and with their old Kyivan customs.
6) In 1169 Andrey Bogoliubsky sacked and destroyed Kyiv. He destroyed all the churches and religious artifacts, something unheard of in those times.
Andrey was a barbarian who did not feel any familial ties with Kyiv, the holy city of Slavs.

Within a brief time (50-80 years) every Finnish tribe was imposed with a prince of the Riurykovyches, whose mother was either a woman of Mer, Murom or Kokshan… Thus appeared the ‘Moksel’ princedoms: Vladimir, Riazan, Tver, and others. At this time, some missionaries appeared in the land of Moksel to spread Christianity. It is impossible to consider a mass ‘migration’ of Slavs from the Dnipro river region, as Russian historians insist. Why should the Slavs leave behind their fertile Dnipro lands and relocate more than a thousand kilometers through impassable undergrowth and swamps into an unknown semi-savage land?
Under the influence of Christianity, the land of ‘Moksel’ started to form their language, which in time became Russian. Up until the XII century, only Finn tribes lived in the land of ‘Moksel’. The archaeological findings of O.S. Uvarova (Meria and their everyday life from kurhan excavations, 1872 – p. 215) support this. Out of 7729 excavated kurhans, not a single Slavic burial was discovered.
(And the anthropological investigations of human skulls by A. P. Bohdanov and F. K. Vovk support the differentiated characteristics of the Finnish and Slavic ethnoses.)
In 1237 the Tatar-Mongols entered the lands of Suzdal. All who bowed, kissed the boots of the Khan and accepted subservience remained alive and unharmed, all others who did not submit were destroyed.
7)The princes of Vladimir, Yury and Yaroslav Vsevolodovich accepted subservience to Khan Batey. In this manner, the land of ‘Moksel’ entered the ranks of the Golden Horde Empire of Genghis Khan, and its fighting forces were combined with the army of the Empire. The commander of the Moksel division within Batey’s army was Yury Vsevolodovich, the prince of the city of Vladimir. In 1238, Finnish tribe divisions were formed and marched together under Batey in his invasions of Europe in 1240-1242. This is direct evidence of the establishment of the rule of the Khan in the lands of Rostov-Suzdal. While Yuri Vsevolodovich was away taking part in Batey’s European invasion, his younger brother Yaroslav Vsevolodovich was placed at the head of the Vladimir princedom. Yaroslav left his eight year old son Alexander Yaroslavich as hostage with the Khan.
8) Living with the Horde of Batey from 1238 to 1252 Alexander, only much later named ‘Nevsky’, adopted all the customs and organizational ideas of the Golden Horde. He became a blood brother of Sartak, the son of the Khan, married the Khan’s daughter, and eventually became a loyal vassal of the Golden Horde and prince of Vladimir from 1252 to 1263. He never took part in any significant battles – all the ‘victories’ of Alexander Nevsky are transparent lies. Prince Alexander simply could never had taken part in the battles on the Neva in 1240 and on Chud or Peipus Lake in 1242 (fantasized in Eisenstein’s film) because he was still a child.
9) The big lie was introduced: that Moscow was founded in 1147 by Yuri Dolgoruky. This is a myth with no supportive evidence. Moscow was established as a settlement in 1272. That same year the Golden Horde conducted their third census of the populations in their domain. Both in the first census (1237-1238) and in the second census (1254-1259) there is no mention of any Moscow at all.
Moscow appeared as a princedom in 1277 at the decree of the Tatar-Mongol Khan Mengu-Timur and it was an ordinary ‘ulus’ (subdivision) of the Golden Horde. The first Moscow prince was Daniel (1277-1303), younger son of Alexander, so-called ‘Nevsky’. The Riurykovich dynasty of Moscow princes starts from him. In 1319 Khan Uzbek (as stated in the afore-mentioned work by Bilinsky) named his brother Kulkhan the virtual Prince of Moscow, and in 1328 the Great Prince of Moscow. Khan Uzbek (named in Russian history as Kalita), after he converted to Islam, destroyed almost all the Riurykovich princes. In 1319-1328 the Riurykovich dynasty was replaced by the Genghis dynasty in the Moscow ‘ulus’ of the Golden Horde. In 1598 this Genghis dynasty in Moscow which began with Prince Ivan Kalita (Kulkhan) was finally broken. Thus for over 270 years, Moscow was ruled solely by the Khans of Genghis.
10) Based on these facts, it becomes clear that Moscow is the direct inheritor of the Golden Horde Empire of Genghis and that actually the Tatar-Mongols were the ‘godfathers’ of Moscow statehood. The Moscow princedom (and tsardom from 1547) up until the XVI century had no ties or relationships with the princedoms of the lands of
Kyivan Rus.
Finally:
The tribe of Great Russians, or the Russian people as known today, appeared around the XV to XVII centuries from among the Finn tribes: Muroma, Mer, Ves and others. This was when their history started. There is no history of Great Russians on Kyivan lands! The history of Great Russians starts with the ‘Beyond the Forests Land’ in Moscow, which was never Kyivan Rus. The Tatar-Mongols who entered these lands were a big element in the formulation of ‘Great Russians’. The Great Russian psychology absorbed many characteristics – the Tatar-Mongol instincts of a conqueror and despot, with the ultimate aim: world domination. Thus by the XVI cent. was established the type of a conqueror who was horrible in his lack of education, rage and cruelty. These people had no use for European culture and literacy. All such things like morality, honesty, shame, justice, human dignity and historical awareness were absolutely foreign to them. A significant amount of Tatar-Mongols entered the makeup of Great Russians from the XIII to XVI centuries and they accounted for the genealogy of over 25% of Russian nobility. Here are some Tatar names that brought fame to the Russian Empire: Arakcheev, Bunin, Derzhavin, Dostoyevsky, Kuprin, Plekhanov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Turgenev, Sheremetiev, Chadaev and many others.
If you want to speak, speak the truth. So, all these comments here are purely rhetorical because there is NO legitimate Rus-sia…only the remnants of the savage Mongol Khans..and tribes of Moskovy

Pasha, you did not comment on the 10 million plus Ukrainians starved to death by Stalin in order to eradicate the Ukrainian language and its people, that’s a far cry of the 900 thousand killed by Germans and there where a lot of jews as well that collaborated with the Germans. The 10 million is a small number, because millions more died in the labor camps in russia which no one is willing to mention and yet your being so sarcastic that Ukrainians want to be FREE from the murdering russians once and for ever. Ukrainians SHALL never forget these atrocities committed by your friends the russians. Kievian Rus, was there before there was a wet dream of russia which they stole the name from us. Your just a jealous russian that Ukraine is much more supra then the russians will ever be.

Rick!!!!!!!!It looks like you have been reading some neo fascistic modern day ‘ukrainian’ history book. Ukraine was not even a country until after the revolution of 1917.It was purely an experimental republic created by lénin. Even my cat knows that kiyevan “rus” was the base of the founding of Russia, not ‘ukraine’, which only found its way into atlasses from about 1918. Prior to this ,ukraine was western Russia!Catherine the great referred to this territory as my ‘krai’, or edge. The poles called their lvov-galytsia-volyn as ‘okraina’, which is where present day ukraine gets its name from. As for the finnish content you will see that Estonians are actually finns as well as many inhabitants of mordovskaya republic whom are russified finns. As for Alexander Nevskiy, if you read the proper historic accounts, you will see that he became an excellent strategist from a very young age. As for Suzdal -the tatars never got to it!People like you are not worth arguing with as you would never know the truth, even if it was handed to you on a silver platter. Yet you dig up fabricated and distorted lies and believe them. Next you will be saying that the great ‘ukr’civilization is over 40,000 years old,the Lord Jesus was a ukrainian cossack and that Galillee was mistakenly mixed up with Galycia!

The “fact” number 6:
Regardless the fact that this so called genocide was admitted by many countries among which are the historical rivals of Russia such as Poland, UK and US, the starvation in Ukraine was not officially acknowledged to be a genocide. The reason for that is the total starvation in the Soviet Union which took place in Russia, Belorus, Khazahstan and many other soviet republics. Ukranians are the only nation who claim to be a subject of the genocide probably due to the historical inclination to distort and to rewrite history as they are doing today publishing new historical books where they claim to be the oldest nation in the world – older then China with their 5000 years of history or Egypt (see the “fact” #4).

There has been so much information that is finally becoming available to the public since 1991 and the fall of the USSR. Ukraine has been a nation for much longer than the Russian government and their media will admit but the rest of the world is finally finding out the truth. The Holodomor happened and should be brought to light as a black mark on Russian history. The actual count will never be known but it is estimated at a low end of 10 million and could actually be over 20 million. The Russians were totally responsible for this and were trying to wipe out the entire Ukrainian population or at least enslave them to work for the Supreme Stalinist power. The thought that the Russians suffered from the food shortage is complete nonsense because Stalin was using food harvested in Ukraine to sell to the rest of Europe to help industrialize Russia. If Russians did die of starvation, it was because Stalin let them. Stalin also killed most of the soldiers that were sent to burn and bury the Ukrainian dead because he was paranoid that they would tell others what was happening.

Hey people, guess how does sound “Rus'” in greek? “Rosia”. You can go and check it out on ANY online translator/greek dictionary. Oh, and btw, Grand Prince Yaroslav, the father of the Anna, who “tied up medieval ukraine” with western Europe wrote first laws of that terriotory. Guess what the name was? “Russian truth”. Yes, “Russian truth”. If you don’t believe me – go and check out the 2 hryvna banknote: http://img1.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/c/11/114/281/114281207_RSRyoRRRPYtg.jpg
Don’t believe the propaganda. We are Russians and we are meant to stay together with Russia.